Incompetent senior leadership and a dangerously toxic corporate culture. - Anonymous employee Helix Employee Review

1.0
May 23, 2019
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Helix's mission to help empower people with their DNA is a noble one.

Cons

The senior HR team is about as insensitive and incompetent as any leadership team I've ever come across. It's ironic that the people working in a department whose core responsibility is managing its employee base, often seem the absolute least qualified to do so. They have shown time and time again an utter lack of empathy towards sensitive cultural and diversity issues as well as direct employee communication. Expect to be paid well under market value and with stock not being worth much either, it's a hard pill to swallow. The corporate culture has been eroding for quite some time, and apart from some a small number of employees, Helix isn't a place where you'd go to find company values worth the work hours.

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Helix Response
6y
Ouch, this is really harsh. We’re sorry that you are so angry. We’d like to help you, not only by responding here but also by encouraging you to give us your ideas and feedback directly (because that’s how we roll here at Helix)! The HR team, along with the broader leadership team, care deeply about each of our team members. We want each person to truly feel like they belong at Helix. We want each person to be able to be their best, bring their unique selves, and ultimately be more creative and energized each day. To support this, we spend time simply listening to employees through one-to-one chats with a variety of team members to providing professional development training, to sponsoring the Diversity and Inclusion committee and ERGs, to Unconscious Bias Discussions, and a variety of different social events. Additionally, we’re proud of our inclusive and rigorous talent planning sessions. By including all people managers and leaders in this annual program, each team member gets personalized feedback, development and career suggestions from those who have worked most closely with them. We also use world class benchmarking comp data to ensure that we are keeping pace with the market for every single role. This is incorporated into our bi-annual comp review cycle. Additionally, we are constantly reviewing internal equity, as fair pay is a top priority for us. Lastly, culture is fueled by everyone at Helix. Our team members really live the values and spend time thinking of ways to make life at Helix great. The broader team has created a great learning culture through things like leader-led training, Science Hour or Policy Hour, Industry Updates on Slack, self-driven management development programs, and of course, our frequent and regular all-hands meetings (TAG). This meeting encourages team members to understand, collaborate, question and challenge everything from our overall strategy to upcoming partnerships, products, financials and more. We want Helix employees to have what they need to continue to make our mission a reality. We’re happy to chat more, please reach out to the HR team directly or any member of the leadership team. We’d genuinely like to hear your feedback directly. -- Romina

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Cons

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1.0
Nov 2, 2024
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Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The industry the company is in has potential.

Cons

After a decade, many basic processes are still not standardized. Simple tasks that should be easy elsewhere take unnecessary effort here. Mid-level managers form cliques, handling conflicts by forcing the more reasonable side to back down. Double standards are everywhere. People who don’t do the work tend to oppress those who do. Managers have a shallow understanding of both the work and people, resorting to bullying those who are kind while avoiding confrontations with the strong or rude. There's a constant manpower shortage, and higher-level issues are often dumped on lower-level employees, but salaries and promotions don’t reflect this. Meetings are mostly for show—employees are only allowed to ask trivial questions or praise each other. If you bring up real issues, they’ll either ask you to fix them yourself or tell you to stay quiet. Layoffs have been frequent over the past year, mostly targeting decent employees who won’t cause trouble or those who dare to speak up. The company is rigidly hierarchical, both in title and race. Middle managers give speeches as if they’re important figures, which is laughable. The quality of employees has dropped, and management is full of holes. Issues in old negative Glassdoor reviews remain unresolved to this day. The tolerance for toxic employees and the chaotic management have left good employees discouraged—they either find excuses to leave or simply cut down their productivity. As one one-star review said, this company needs a complete overhaul, not just minor tweaks.

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